Bacon questions!

So what's the best bacon to consume? What is the deal with nitrates? Are they really bad? How bad? And how much sugar could there be in sugar-cured bacon and ham? Significant amounts? One of my favorites is microwaveable bacon from Kroger......easy, tastes great......so what's wrong with it? Let's talk bacon!

So what's the best bacon to consume? What is the deal with nitrates? Are they really bad? How bad? And how much sugar could there be in sugar-cured bacon and ham? Significant amounts? One of my favorites is microwaveable bacon from Kroger......easy, tastes great......so what's wrong with it? Let's talk bacon!

It's a matter of priorities to you. Lots of people consume uncured bacon, which has no nitrates. Some uncured bacon has no sugar. Or it may be from pastured pigs. All theoretically better.

They sell uncured bacon at my supermarket for $7.99 a pound, twice the price of regular bacon. I haven't tried it.

Millions of people do buy conventional bacon and eat it. It hasn't killed them yet. It's no doubt better than froot loops.

For me, bacon is an occasional thing. I don't go out of my way to buy it, but sometimes it's a yummy treat. Due to an error in a US Wellness order, I got some beef bacon instead of some sugar free beef hot dogs I ordered. Since I have some bison and lamb liver in the freezer, I'll create something with liver and bacon.

I don't know the best in the supermarkets. I do know that bacon will never nutritionally replace liver, good pastured muscle meats, other pastured offal, etc. It's a treat that doesn't harm you. IMO, it's not a staple. Others will disagree fersure.

"Right is right, even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it." - St. Augustine

All dried foods go in the "garnish" category for me. I wouldn't consider bacon a proper main course protein, but it's nice for cobb salads and party foods. I also like to save the drip for dark greens and onion sauté.

Niman Ranch is probably my favorite. I avoid anything with added smoke flavor since it tends to smell pretty foul.

I had a butcher inform me that the nitrates in bacon is minimal. He said there were more nitrates in beef jerky than there was in bacon. We eat it all the time...my husband lives off of it everyday. I prefer a bit more variety for breaky.

I read recently that we ingest (or produce, can't remember) more nitrate than we could ever consume from bacon.

I don't worry about it.
I do buy good bacon because, over here, it's the fattier stuff. The cheap supermarket bacon, as well as not being raised responsibly has all the fat bred out and/or trimmed off :/

Nitrates are organic compounds known to cause cancer. I'm not sure what study that article thought was discredited, other studies compare cancer rates in similar US cities with different nitrate amounts in the drinking water and find different rates of cancer correlated with those levels. This is why people are apoplectic over the Beijing drinking water--nitrate levels-- and why in the USA filtering your water is generally recommended- we allow what I would characterize as fairly high nitrate levels in municipal water supplies (and then we allow it not to be disclosed- cities can choose to disclose the percentage they remove instead of disclosing the actual amount, my city does that).

I eat cured bacon. And I drink water straight from the tap. For that matter I eat huge mounds of beautiful fluffy chocolate cake made of wheat. But I don't make a daily habit of any of those things.